Robin Strom - On the Hunt for the Haunted: Searching for Proof of the Paranormal

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

On the Hunt for the Haunted: Searching for Proof of the Paranormal 2019 by Robin M. Strom.

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First e-book edition 2019

E-book ISBN: 9780738760179

Book design by Samantha Penn

Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

Cover illustration by Dominick Finelle / The July Group

Interior photos provided by the author

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending)

ISBN: 978-0-7387-5841-1

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Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my dad,

whom I miss every day.

I did it, Dad! Oh, and the Cubs won the World Series.
Really, Im not kidding.

Contents

Part I:

Chapter 1:

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3:

Chapter 4:

Chapter 5:

Part II:

Chapter 6:

Chapter 7:

Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Renne Whitmore and Judy Hill-Truitt for helping me with the research for this book. If I needed a sexual offender profiled or the history of an old hotel researched, they were kind enough to do it. Thank you both for your invaluable assistance. I could not have done it without you.

Introduction

To understand the living, you got to commune with the dead.
Minerva, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

I am a paranormal researcher and have been for a number of years. That means while most normal people are off for a walk or mowing the lawn, Im in my house behind a computer screen perusing long hours of video, listening to audio, researching, or writing. I miss a lot of family time. My rosebushes are woefully overgrown, and we end up eating more meals of takeout than I like to admit. Its not glamorous. I wish I could say, as an author, that I got into the paranormal because Id been terrorized by an evil demon as a child or had grown up in a haunted house, fighting for my very existence. But my formative years were peaceful and joyous. I had my own first paranormal experience when I was in my early thirties, and that wasnt terrifying eitherjust mystifying, as so many paranormal phenomena tend to be.

However, Ive always had a taste for the macabre, enjoying ghost stories as a child and scary movies as a teen. For me, thats all they had ever beenjust stories. I dont know that I ever fathomed that the paranormal could actually be real until that first time I experienced it. And I certainly never considered that I might be able to study the paranormal until that one fateful night I saw my first Ghost Hunters episode.

Certainly, I got into paranormal research seeking to experience something. But the reason I think it bit me so hard and fast was the fact that at the very bottom of all this work and time was the pursuit of fundamental answers. Is there life beyond death? Are ghosts real? If so, what are they? The quest for those answers has kept me going all these years.

I can say that I now know that odd, frightening, and unexplainable things happen to people, perfectly normal people, every day. People of all ages, socioeconomic levels, education levels, and religious backgrounds. Experiences with the paranormal are universal across cultures and societies. And people have paranormal experiences more often than youd expect. Recent polls suggest that three-quarters of the American population believe in the possibility of the paranormal, and nearly one in five claim to have seen a ghost.

Our Approach

As I said earlier, I got into paranormal research because I was searching for answers. As a result, I try to remain unbiased when I approach an investigation. I dont want to delude myself that a place is haunted if its not, and I certainly dont wish to mislead my clients. They contact me for help, and I can only help them if I give them the most accurate information I can. Delaware Paranormal Research Group therefore uses a more scientific approach to paranormal investigation than the vast majority of my paranormal colleagues. To be brief but clear, we dont use psychics to give readings of a location, we dont hold sances, and we dont use Ouija boards or ghost boxes. Instead, we use an arsenal of electronic equipment in order to record and detect anything thats going on at a location.

I have had clients who really didnt want us to employ a scientific approach to an investigation. Many of them really just want me to bring in a medium to give them a reading. And I understand where they are coming from. But I cant verify a feeling or an impressionit isnt solid material proofand I begin my own journey looking for that proof.

To obtain that proof we basically use three broad categories of equipment: measurement devices, recording devices, and detection devices. Our measurement devices measure environmental changes, monitoring temperature, barometric pressure, electromagnetic fields, vibration, humidity, and so on. Of course, the most prosaic device is the electromagnetic field (EMF) detector. Electromagnetic fields are everywhere around us all the time. The human brain is powered by electromagnetism, and so are the muscles that move our arms and legs. Theres a natural EMF in both the core of the earth and your household lamp. Ghosts are believed to be willful energy, a consciousness without a body. In order to have an interaction with us or to fuel activity, they need to feed themselves with energy just as we eat food. Its long been supposed that they can do this by draining energy from household electrical devices (AC power) or from battery-powered devices (DC power). When they do something like bang on a wall or speak into a recorder, they are expending that energy. Hence, the EMF detector is an essential in every tool kit, just as a carpenter always has a hammer.